The present invention generally relates to a disc drive microactuator. More particularly, the invention relates to an encapsulant covering all exposed surfaces of a component wherein the component may be selected from the group consisting of the microactuator, slider, disc spacer, surface mount component on a printed circuit card assembly, or a ceramic component of a disc drive. The invention further relates to a microactuator driven by piezoelectric (lead-zirconate-titanate) crystals, the microactuator having improved cleanliness and decreased particle generation levels within the drive.
Disc drive systems include disc drive suspensions for supporting transducing heads over information tracks of a rotatable disc. Typically, suspensions include a load beam having a mounting region on a proximal end, a flexure on a distal end, a relatively rigid region adjacent to the flexure, and a spring region between the mounting region and the rigid region. An air bearing slider, which holds the transducing head, is supported by the flexure. The mounting region is typically attached to a base plate for mounting the load beam to an actuator arm. A motor, which is controlled by a servo control system, rotates the actuator arm to position the transducing head over the desired information tracks on the disc. This type of suspension is used with both magnetic and non-magnetic discs.
The density of concentric data tracks on magnetic discs continues to increase (i.e., the size of data tracks and radial spacing between data tracks are decreasing), requiring more precise radial positioning of the transducing head. Conventionally, head positioning is accomplished by operating an actuator arm with a large-scale actuation motor, such as a voice coil motor (VCM), to radially position the head on the slider at the end of the actuator arm. The large-scale motor lacks sufficient resolution to effectively accommodate high track density discs. Thus, a high resolution head positioning mechanism, or microactuator, is necessary to accommodate the more densely spaced tracks.
One design for high resolution head positioning involves employing a high resolution microactuator in addition to the conventional low resolution actuator motor, thereby effecting head positioning through dual stage actuation. Various microactuator designs have been considered to accomplish high resolution head positioning. These designs, however, all have shortcomings that limit the effectiveness of the microactuator. Many designs increase the complexity of designing and assembling the existing components of the disc drive, while other designs are unable to achieve the force and bandwidth necessary to accommodate rapid track access. Therefore, those prior designs do not present ideal microactuator solutions.
More recent microactuator designs employ electroactive elements to effect movement of the suspension with respect to the actuator arm, i.e., suspension level microactuators, or to effect movement of the flexure with respect to the suspension. In a suspension level microactuator, the electroactive elements generally include piezoelectric crystal dies attached between a head mounting block (or base plate) of the actuator arm and the head suspension. The piezoelectric elements are typically ceramic PZT crystals and are either single layer or multi-layer (ML) crystals.
In the field of hard disc drives, ceramic (hard) particles are a major source of damage to recording heads and the disc media, and the PZT crystals are a source of ceramic particles within the drive. In operation, voltage is applied to the PZT crystals to deform the element and thereby effect movement of the suspension with respect to the actuator arm. The voltage application to the piezoelectric element causes expansion and contraction of the PZT die, which causes ceramic particles to be ejected from the surfaces and edges of the element. The particles are a potential source of damage to the recording head and disc media and result in hard errors, head failures, and loss of data.
Cleaning has been the primary method for hard particle removal, but cleaning weakens the grain boundaries and allows for more particles to be freed from the PZT crystal, thereby exasperating the hard particle problem. Multi-layer PZT crystals also pose an additional problem because moisture in the drive environment will cause electrode migration of the Ag—Pd electroding, which can significantly lower the insulation resistance of the ML PZT crystal. This effect will be observed as a loss in stroke performance of the head gimbal assembly over time.
Some prior systems have tried to minimize particles by cleaning of the suspension assembly in an aqueous or solvent system, but have not succeeded because the particle reduction plateaus. Other systems use glob-top encapsulants to minimize particles, but such encapsulants are not useful in a drive environment due to contamination issues and microactuator stroke reduction. In addition, some moisture barrier techniques involve embedding the ends of the layered electrodes in the PZT, but this technique minimizes the effective area of the ML crystal, reduces total potential stroke for a given die size, and contributes more area for particle generation.
Most sliders are composed of alumina titanium carbide (AlTiC), which has a high energy surface. Incoming, ceramic (hard) particles, moisture and lubricant from the recording media easily adhere or adsorb to the slider surface. In addition, the composite structure of AlTiC tends to release particles from its grains due to shock and contact events causing drives to crash or fail when the slider runs over a particle at high speed.
A microactuator and a slider, for example, are needed which minimize particles ejected from the PZT crystals during voltage application, prevent particle shedding due to contact events (including load and unload), significantly reduce surface particulate levels, prevent incoming particle accumulation, adhesion or agglomeration on surfaces, provide a moisture barrier that does not contribute to hard particle generation or lower the insulation resistance in capacitance, mitigate lube pick up from media for recording heads, and improve flyability of recording heads with reduced stiction/friction.